‘Even the Smallest Prize Would Make a Huge Difference’

It was a wicker basket that started it all for entrepreneur Emily Mathieson. A beautiful hand-made wicker basket, to be exact, one that she bought at a craft fair near her home at a stall run by a charity working with vulnerable adults.

“It was the only one they’d sold that day, and I just thought there was something wrong here,” she says. “I knew that what they needed was a wider platform. That would mean more revenue for their charity, a boost in self-esteem for the makers.”

Mathieson, a former journalist who wrote about luxury travel, had always dreamed of owning a shop, and she realized that this was the opportunity she’d been waiting for.Aerende, her online store selling upmarket housewares made by people in the UK facing social challenges, was born.

A win at the upcoming London Creator Awards—Aerende is a finalist in the nonprofit category of the awards sponsored by WeWork—would mean a cash prize and the opportunity to scale up her social enterprise in an unprecedented way.

Emily Mathieson of Aerende hopes to scale up her social enterprise in an unprecedented way.

“Even the smallest prize that they have would make a huge difference,” says Mathieson, who wants to work with more artisans and break into the lucrative wedding market, among other expansion goals.

Taking place on Oct. 25 at London’sPrintworks, this is the second incarnation for the awards in the capital city. As well as an award for nonprofit organizations with a prize of up to $130,000, there is one for new business ventures, for which the winner could take home $360,000. And performing artists are competing for up to $72,000.

The London awards are just one of a number of Creator Award ceremonies taking place across the world in 2018, in cities like Shanghai, Mexico City, Nashville, and Jerusalem. Established in 2017, the awards have given away millions of dollars in funding to entrepreneurs ranging from newly minted startups to well-established companies.

Aerende isn’t the only company with a conscience on the list of finalists in London this year, and it isn’t the only enterprise hoping to use prize money to scale. Chloë Stewart runsNibs Etc, a business that fights food waste by manufacturing food products—crackers, granola, brownies, and banana bread—from juice pulp, a byproduct of the juice industry that would otherwise be thrown away.

Rachael Corson and Joycelyn Mate, co-founders of Afrocenchix, plan on using a prize from the Creator Awards to meet their current demand.

“I’d love to build the team,” says Stewart, a solo entrepreneur who divides her time among her base at WeWork Bishopsgate, a shared commercial kitchen where she works on her recipes, and Borough Market, where she sells her wares once a week. She’s also on the hunt for co-manufacturers so she can increase supply to meet the considerable demand for her products.

Stewart is also keen to invest in packaging that is more reflective of the values of her business.

“I’m on the hunt for something that is either fully recyclable, biodegradable, or reusable,” she says. “That would be key for selling the products on shelves. I would love to bring the brand to life through the packaging.”

Rachael Corson and Joycelyn Mate, co-founders of natural hair care manufacturerAfrocenchix, find themselves in a similar position to Stewart, unable to meet demand and, according to Corson, “having to say no to businesses that want to stock us.”

Hera Hussain, founder of Chayn, will use the prize money to prove her company can be “financially sustainable.”

Created for people with curly or kinky hair seeking an alternative from mainstream hair care products full of harsh chemicals, Afrocenchix currently sells mainly to women in the UK, but the founders are eyeing a global market. A successful pitch to the judging panel—actor Ashton Kutcher, British Vogue publishing director Vanessa Kingori,Peanut app cofounder Michelle Kennedy, andMonzo cofounder Jonas Templestein—could make the difference for them.

The pair, who founded Afrocenchix when studying at the University of Birmingham nearly a decade ago, are also excited about the potential for growing their team. Currently Afrocenchix is just three full-time and four part-time employees, and Corson is looking forward to “creating more jobs in STEM” if the company can expand as a result of investment from the awards.

Sustainably, a technology platform that enables shoppers to “microdonate” the change from their purchases to a range of verified charities, would use Creator Award funding to go international as well, explains cofounder Loral Quinn, by expanding the UK company’s model Stateside. Before that can happen, though, winnings would be put towards “a lot of development work,” primarily to speed up the process of onboarding the 70 charities currently in the pipeline.

Quinn didn’t make the cut for the 2017 London Creator Awards, so she is particularly thrilled that Sustainably is a finalist this year. “We’ve done so much more this year,” she says. “It’s a combination of clearly being able to articulate what it is we do and also show what we’ve done.”

Sustainably cofounder Loral Quinn says any funding will be put towards “a lot of development work.”

Not all the London Creator Award 2018 finalists are seeking funding with scaling up in mind. Hera Hussain, founder ofChayn, a global volunteer network addressing gender-based violence, will be pitching for core funding of her nonprofit. It’s an unusual route, she admits.

“You never say you want core funding,” she says. “You apply for money towards particular projects. But I chose to be very honest. We need to find out if Chayn can become financially sustainable.”

Since founding the organization in 2013, Hussain explains that “almost everything we’ve done has been done with volunteers with next to zero money.” A win at the Creator Awards would enable her to professionalize the way it provides tools and resources to the survivors of gender-based violence. As it stands, says Hussain, “we just don’t have the bandwidth to do it on a volunteer basis.”

Cemal Ezel is the founder of another nonprofit finalist with grand plans for its Creator Award winnings.Change Please, which trains homeless people as baristas and helps them get jobs at companies like Starbucks and Café Nero, has been based at WeWork Bishopsgate since making the finals of the inaugural London awards last year. Encouraged by the response last year, Ezel decided to apply again.

The goal this year is establishing a dedicated training academy that will replace the 32 individual sites Change Please is currently operating across the country, most of which don’t have the basic amenities—such as showers and washing machines—required to support the people the organization is seeking to help.

“We have the site ready, but we need the cash to get it happening,” says Ezel.

Lucy Hutchinson, cofounder of the phone-case manufacturerMous, is similarly ambitious for the future of her business. Having achieved $2.4 million in crowdfunding in 2017, the business started with a bang. Now, explains Hutchinson, Mous is looking to the next step.

“We’d really like to take the ethos which we took to build our phone case—building it from the ground up and understanding what our customers really want from that product—and begin building protective accessories for other devices too,” says Hutchinson.

The timing of the Creator Awards has been a little “nerve-wracking” for the company, Hutchison admits. Preparations for the live pitching event are taking place alongside extensive planning for the roll-out of a new range of clear phone cases. But they’re taking it in stride.

“To go from being a team of five co-founders a year ago to presenting to 2,000 people at the awards is really quite special,” she says.

James Roberts, cofounder of mOm incubators, wants to revolutionize access to neonatal medicine with a collapsible infant incubator that can be used in war zones and other harsh environments across the developing world.

Winning the business venture award “would be a huge achievement for me and the team,” says Roberts. “It would be a monumental step forward. The money will allow us to put product into the field, collect testing data, and start to save children’s lives.”

Issa Rae’s Key to Success? Hire People Smarter Than Herself

Because she is the name and face of the operation, it’s easy to assume that Issa Rae alone is responsible for parlaying her web series, Awkward Black Girl, into a thriving business that includes producing her hit HBO show, Insecure, and other endeavors. But she would be the first to dispel such misconceptions.

“I like to hire people who have a specific lane, who do something very well,” Rae told WeWork employees from around the world as part of the “Team Awesome” track at the company’s Global Summit in Los Angeles in early January. “I hire a lot of people who are smarter than me. If I’m the smartest person in my company, then my company will go nowhere.”

(Left to right) Benoni Tagoe, Deniese Davis, and Issa Rae talk about how they work together to fund passion projects at WeWork’s Global Summit.

Two of those people—Benoni Tagoe, business-development director of Issa Rae Productions, and Deniese Davis, her co-founder at ColorCreative, which shepherds underserved voices in Hollywood—joined her on the panel. They spoke both about how they work together to fund passion projects that will also elevate their brand and how they find other team members who may not always be the obvious choices.

“Sometimes you may not have the skill set; sometimes you may not have the talent,” says Tagoe, a friend-of-a-friend Rae hired when he explained to her all the ways she was missing out on monetizing her business. He says the important thing is to “always have the curiosity” because “with curiosity, as long as you’re trying and figuring things out, you’re allowed to make mistakes.”

Because these executives came up through nontraditional means, Davis stresses to her coworkers the old adages that there are no bad ideas and you shouldn’t be afraid to speak up. Even when budgeting or scheduling won’t allow them to implement an idea right away, she says, “We love to come up with ideas to attain and aspire and achieve, even if it’s going to be three or four years down the line.”

Rae admits that she’s sometimes had doubts about pitches, but when others persuaded her to have the patience to wait it out, “I found out, pleasantly, that I was wrong, and I’m glad I didn’t say no.” She also keeps a file of the projects that didn’t pan out, which keeps their egos in check and reminds them that there’s more work to do. “I don’t necessarily believe in failure; I just believe in the opportunity to learn and grow.”

Davis and her team never stop learning—and because of that, she says, “we’ve gotten really good at identifying the priorities that need to take place” even if they require extra meetings and work to make their time efficient.

Sometimes this is easier said than done. Tagoe says that even though he may be the type of person who is always looking for the next big idea, “in a team setting, you can’t get everyone to move at the same time. You have to approach people individually.”

While Rae acknowledges that there can be extra pressure on people of color to always “have your best feet forward,” she firmly believes that “within your company and within your team members and the people you’re working with,” it’s OK to sometimes bring your B-game.

“The world is watching,” agrees Tagoe. But, he says, every year has built on the last. “I think we’re excited about 2019 because all our ideas are coming together.”

Much of this is due to employee retention, he says. It’s not just about “making sure [you’re] taking care of [your] people,” he says. “It’s making sure that the company you work for is telling that story of, This is a great place to work.”

The head of the operation isn’t anything without the support of the bodies behind her.

Why Jaden Smith Will Never Run Out of Ideas

For Jaden Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness is more than just the creatively misspelled title of the film he debuted in at age 7 with his superstar dad, Will Smith.

It’s the overarching goal in life, says the 20-year-old musician-activist-entrepreneur. “Unhindered, long-term happiness,” he emphasizes. “People think it’s the new car, the job promotion, but it’s not. That’s not what success looks like. Success is happiness.”

Smith alighted on the subject as part of an insightful address at the “Make It Happen” track, a panel discussion at WeWork’s recent Global Summit in Los Angeles. Sporting powder-pink hair and clad in apparel from his MSFTSRep sustainably-sourced fashion brand Smith possessed his father’s charisma; the directness of his mother, actress Jada Pinkett Smith; and a preternatural maturity.

“I’m young and on the path of trying to make things happen,” he says. “But everything I do in my life, I do for my parents.”

“Failure is important because it’s how you keep going,” says Jaden Smith.

So far, he’s done a lot. He went into acting against the advice of his well-meaning parents, who warned him that it was a lot harder than it looked. But when his dad had trouble finding the right young boy to play his son in Pursuit, Smith got his chance. He nabbed roles in other films—The Karate Kid and After Earth—while segueing into music; his debut album, SYRE, which came out in late 2017, hit 100 million streams on Spotify. His clothing brand, MSFTSRep, has the lofty ambition of reusing materials as much as possible: Pants that Smith wore on stage were embellished with patches of old T-shirts that would have otherwise ended up in a landfill.

And then there’s JUST Water, his brand of water bottled in Glen Falls, New York, which comes in plant-derived packaging with a cap made from sugarcane, designed to be reused or recycled with none of the long-term environmental impact of plastic. On the market since 2012, JUST Water—a member at WeWork 311 W 43rd St in New York—is now sold in 30,000 locations across the country, including Target, Ralph’s, and CVS.

The success of the brand fueled JUST Impact, a nonprofit arm of the company predicated on environmental preservation. JUST Impact’s latest initiative involves installing a reverse-osmosis filtration system in the lead-ridden water supply in Flint, Michigan. With this pilot program, the city can purify 10 gallons of water every 60 seconds, allowing residents to ultimately wean themselves off of the reported 3 million bottles of water consumed each year.

“Instead of having to outsource [water], we said, ‘Let’s create something for you here where you can pump your own clean water, in your community,’” Smith explains. “I’d been seeing them struggle for so long, and I asked, ‘Why isn’t someone doing something about this?’ Ultimately, what I’m trying to do is to help people around the world.”

As if this weren’t enough to keep anyone busy, with Smith there are always more ideas percolating, companies incubating, and partnerships forming. “If it’s more of a complex idea, the first thing I will do is find a business partner, someone I can explain it to and they get it,” he says.

Next, he focuses on team-building, which he says is a critical step in any endeavor. “We look for the next piece of this puzzle. We go through our phone books and find someone who could be a business manager. Then I say, ‘Do we all still get this vision? Do we get the mood boards?’ I repeat that the whole time, meeting after meeting until we’re sitting around a conference table with 10 people, and we can say, ‘OK, let’s get it done. Let’s go.’”

For Smith, the true measure of success may be happiness, but he also finds value in failure. “Failure is important because it’s how you keep going—it’s what you do right after you fail,” he says. “Nobody is meant to win all the time. Instead of saying, ‘I failed today,’ start saying, ‘Here’s how I learned, experienced, or grew today.’”

Paint That Does More Than Cover Your Walls

Paint is big business—and for most of us, a big hassle. While American consumers are expected to spend just north of $30 billion on paint and paint accessories in 2019, the process of choosing, buying, and applying paint to homes, offices, and retail spaces is often an aggravating one.

“Buying paint has traditionally involved an overwhelming color selection, poor customer service, many trips to the store, and a lot of frustration,” says Nicole Gibbons, an interior designer who founded the direct-to-consumer startup Clare as a way to offer design-focused customers an easier, better way to engage with every step of the painting process.

From colors named after trendy incense to paint that promises to reduce sound, new direct-to-consumer brands like Clare are proving that changing the color of your walls can be easy, cost-effective, and stress-free.

With Clare, it’s all about taking the guesswork out of painting a room. A point of pride for Gibbons is Clare Color Genius, a tool she describes as “a digital color consultation paired with a high-tech algorithm that delivers an expert color recommendation.” It prompts users to upload images and information about natural light in the space, furniture, personal style, and more before offering suggestions. An easy swatching system (stick-ons!) helps customers narrow the field to the color, and a calculator determines exactly how much paint is needed to cover the area.

The direct-to-consumer startup Clare offers design-focused customers an easier, better way to engage with every step of the painting process.

More than anything, the future of paint is one in which logistics aren’t a concern—the direct-to-consumer model, says Gibbons, allows her to see in real-time what her customers need and offer them the right products each step of the way.

For Caleb and Natalie Ebel, the husband-and-wife team behind Backdrop, the frustration with the painting process was personal. “We’ve painted every apartment we’ve lived in,” says Natalie of the New York City-based couple, who previously worked in financial operations at Warby Parker (Caleb) and marketing (Natalie). So in November 2018, they launched Backdrop, their own direct-to-consumer paint company. From the start, they knew they’d tapped into something important.

“We had an amazing community of early Backdrop brand supporters—some of whom we met at WeWork Corrigan Station in Kansas City, Missouri (the Ebels call New York home but are originally from Kansas City, and often travel there to visit family)—who helped vote on colors and paint names,” says Natalie. Their colors, like “Palo Santo” and “Rose Quartz,” speak the language of Instagram, tapping into trends in design and decor.

Looking beyond home spaces, the Ebels note that the new wave of paint options could be a boon to business owners: “Commercial walls require so much upkeep that Backdrop can really help streamline,” Caleb says. Going the direct-to-consumer route cuts down on shopping time, and smaller color ranges allow businesses to home in on the right look for their spaces instead of poring over an endless array of shades.

Looking beyond home spaces, the founders of Backdrop note that the new wave of paint options could be a boon to business owners.

Shanghai-based Hipaint, a member at WeWork Ciyunsi, offers paint containing polymer-nanofilm technology, which turns any wall into a whiteboard. The product was inspired by founder Justin Cheng’s then-2-year-old daughter. “She just grabbed a marker and drew on the wall,” he said. “An entire wall can hold a totally new world for kids.”

Jonah Lupton came up with the idea for his noise-reducing-paint company, Soundguard, while living in a loud apartment building after college. “I thought, there has to be a better way to deal with this than just trying to soundproof the room itself,” says Lupton, who worked with a team of paint chemists for more than two years to refine Soundguard’s patent-pending formula. The paint is proven to reduce sound through interior walls at nearly 90 percent and is already being used (or soon will be) in hotels and apartment buildings in vacation destinations like Hawaii and business hotspots like San Francisco. But Lupton, whose company is based at WeWork 745 Atlantic Ave in Boston, thinks it holds an obvious appeal for workspaces, too. “Imagine a law office that deals with sensitive information,” he says. “No more whispering and trying not to be overheard!”

One thing nearly every new direct-to-consumer paint company has in common is an emphasis on sustainability and safety—for humans, pets, and plants alike. The products are low-odor, low-VOC (volatile organic compounds), and GreenWise certified, meaning less stress for increasingly health-conscious shoppers.

The new crop of paint startups can’t promise that changing the color of your walls will be quite as easy as changing the color of your shirt—but their goal is to make it as painless, even enjoyable, as possible.

Prep school

Before you paint, check out these tips from our experts.

Stock up ahead of time. Instead of running around the hardware store hoping you get all the right supplies, try a preassembled toolkit, like Backdrop’s Essentials Kit, which comes with all the tape, trays, and brushes you’ll need to get the job done.

Try before you buy. Every expert we spoke to agrees—sampling is key. That’s why new direct-to-consumer companies offer low-priced, easy-to-use swatches you can consider in your space before committing.

Get creative. Have a vision: “Do you want it to feel calm and relaxed, energizing and vibrant?” asks Gibbons. ”Try to find colors that channel those vibes.”

How to Deliver a Pitch That Will Win Over Top Investors

If you ask the judges of WeWork’s second annual Creator Global Finals how they ended up picking the winners of the international entrepreneurship competition, they have two words: “Adam and Ashton.”

Gary Vaynerchuk—entrepreneur, investor, and chairman of media company VaynerX—says actor and investor Ashton Kutcher and WeWork CEO Adam Neumann approached him on the same day. “They said, ‘We need you.’ And I said, ‘I’m in.’”

Kirsten Green, founder of Forerunner Ventures, came onboard in a similar way. “Ashton told me how passionate he is about the work he’s doing with Adam and WeWork, and how he thought this show was special,” she says. “The companies have ambitions and goals in terms of big business but are also about having impact. It’s an honor to come be involved for a few hours.”

Vaynerchuk, Green, and Kutcher were joined on the Microsoft Theater stage in Los Angeles on Jan. 9 by fellow investor (and rapper) Sean Combs to hand out prizes of over $1.7 million to three mission-driven business ventures and one nonprofit in the Global Finals. They explained what they were looking for in the winners.

Know your unique perspective: “The very basic criteria is, how differentiated is the business?” says Green, an early investor in retail brands like Glossier, Outdoor Voices, Dollar Shave Club, and Bonobos. “Are they really playing into a new space in the market? Are they offering an opportunity for business to get done better, both more efficiently and in terms of delivering a better experience?”

“The very basic criteria is, how differentiated is the business?” says Kirsten Green, an early investor in retail brands like Glossier, Outdoor Voices, Dollar Shave Club, and Bonobos.

When she listens to a pitch, she says, she wants to hear an entrepreneur tick off five items: “Define your business; say how it’s different; say what it is today, what it’s going to be in the future, and why you’re the right leader for it.”

Her dream pitch? “If you could figure out how to touch on each of those five things in a way that’s cohesive storytelling in a quick minute, that’s ideal,” she says. “But it’s really hard to do that.”

Think two (or three) steps ahead: The judges took their jobs seriously, looking for flaws that haven’t been considered or opportunities that haven’t been pursued during the Q&A. “That’s when I start poking a little bit,” Vaynerchuk explains of his investment strategy. “What are their reactions? Do they have a grasp of the second move of their business, not just the first?”

But be honest: While Vaynerchuk values leaders who have ready answers, he can easily suss out spin. “Don’t exaggerate something you don’t understand,” he says.

Chloe Alpert, whose medical-technology-resale startup Medinas Health took home $1 million in funding at the awards, had a ready—and honest—answer when Vaynerchuk asked her about hurdles her company had overcome. She told the panel that a subscription fee for hospitals to use their technology hadn’t worked because cash-strapped institutions weren’t interested in laying out an up-front payment for an untested product. When Medinas decided to charge a fee for each transaction performed on their platform, all 12 of the hospitals they’ve approached said yes.

Keep the consumer top of mind: There was an important human element to the winning pitches. Combs asked Rachel Corson, co-founder of London-based Afrocenchix—an affordable, all-natural hair-care line made for black women—why someone should use their products. Corson answered by pointing out the health risks posed by ingredients in many competitors’ lines. “Every single ingredient [in Afrocenchix’s products] does something for the customers,” she explained. Her products don’t add artificial fragrance on the misguided theory that “all black women want to smell like coconut.”

Take your pitch seriously: Talking to these industry giants was nerve-wracking for competitors—especially considering they were doing it on stage in front of 6,000 people. “Gary V. is an absolute marketing god. Kirsten Green, she knows brands,” Alpert says. “Sean Combs, that dude’s a business dude. My co-founder was like, ‘Oh, yeah, music is secondary. That guy knows business.’”

In the moment, standing in front of them, Alpert remembers thinking, “I need them to know the economics. Every time Gary asks a question, it’s a laser. When Green asks a question, that’s like a bomb.”

The judges clearly enjoyed having a crowd witness the kind of conversations that usually happen behind closed doors. After one exchange with Alpert earned her a round of applause, Vaynerchuk leaned back in his chair and looked out into the theater. “It’s more fun to do this with an audience,” he observed.